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June 1, 2018, 8:07 AM GMT / Updated June 3, 2018, 11:26 PM GMT

By Associated Press

MILAN — Italy's anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the right-wing League succeeded Thursday in forming western Europe's first populist government, which will be headed by a political novice.

League leader Matteo Salvini and 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio agreed to shuffle the proposed roster of government ministers amid a financial market scare. They moved Paolo Savona, the 81-year-old euroskeptic economist vetoed by Italy's president from overseeing the economy ministry, to a European affairs Cabinet post. Savona had said previously that Italy should have a contingency plan to abandon the euro.

After the fits, starts and financial turbulence of recent days, the realization of a 5-Star-League coalition government put its populist posture on full display in Salvini's first public remarks. He returned from Rome to address a crowd of supporters in his northern home region of Lombardy.

"I want to make Italy a protagonist in Europe again. With good manners and without creating confusion. But I am fed up of governments with the hat in their hand," Salvini said to cheers. "We are second to no one."

It was a stunning comeback from Sunday evening, when Conte — the premier-designate at the time — left a meeting with Mattarella empty-handed and returned to his teaching job.

Emerging from a similar meeting with a different ending Thursday night, Conte read off his Cabinet list and pledged that "we will work with determination to improve the quality of life of all Italians."

The Cabinet includes Di Maio— architect of the government's proposed basic income for struggling Italians — as welfare minister and Salvini — who has pledged to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants — as interior minister.

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An inconclusive parliamentary election in March produced months of stalemate before the Italian political machinery went into overdrive this week. After rejecting Conte's first attempt, Mattarella tapped a former International Monetary Fund official to head a possible interim government of technocrats to see Italy through to an early election.